“Did you?”
“Or any of the Greeks really. They always end up drenched in blood.”
Betty hadn’t thought of the Greeks, she had thought about the tragedy of that lovely blue dress. It was from Liberty’s. She recognized it. She had nearly purchased it herself. “Was he saved, though?” she mused.
“He was alive when they carted him off, I think.”
“She was called Gwendolen,” Kitty said.
“Dear God,” Betty said, “Kitty’s got a new idol.”
“How do you know she’s called Gwendolen?” Shirley puzzled.
“I asked her.” Kitty shrugged. She had not found an idol, she had found a heroine. For, after all, she might need to be saved from kidnap again. Perhaps from the man outside in the co-respondent shoes. She was bored of him now and left her lookout post to butter more toast.
“Do you think,” Shirley asked Betty, “that she was the woman you saw in Niven’s car at the traffic lights, the one he took for a spin?”
“She didn’t look the type. More spinster than spinner.”
“Clever.”
Betty’s fears had been not for the wounded man but for the little knife, she had been worried that it would be used to dig out the bullet, and relieved when instead it had cut a tablecloth into bandages and the bullet had remained pocketed in the man’s chest.
The long coil of apple peel spiralled in the air without breaking. Betty threw it over her shoulder and she and Shirley peered at it lying on the carpet as if they were haruspices from the ancient world, trying to divine meaning from entrails.
“I think it’s a C,” Shirley said.
“Could be a Q,” Betty said. “Do I know anyone whose name begins with a Q? A Quentin?”
“No, several Cs though. Charles, the Brighouse heir, and Clement—that American in oil.”
They heard the front door open and close. Niven.
“What on earth are you doing?” he asked, kneeling on the floor to greet Keeper by rubbing his ears. The dog swooned.
“Looking for the initial of the man Betty’s going to marry,” Shirley said.
“Such rational creatures,” Niven said. He fed the apple peel to Keeper before the prospective bridegroom could be pinned down conclusively.
“Where have you been?” Shirley asked.
“And where are you going?” Betty demanded as he clicked his fingers for Keeper to follow him out of the room. Niven ignored both questions.
“Should we do Edith an egg and take it up to her? Or toast? It’s not like her to fester all this time.”
The house possessed an ornate electric toaster. They had all the latest gadgets in the Hanover Terrace kitchen, most of which were apparently intent on killing Nellie. Light bulbs were the limit of her beliefs where electricity was concerned.
Betty rose from the table and said heroically, “I’ll do it.”
“You are kind,” Shirley said.
“I am.”
* * *
—
Yes, I am a considerate sister, Betty thought, knocking on the invalid’s door, plate in hand. And knocking. She opened the door cautiously—Edith could bite when cornered—but now she was reduced to a heap of miserable bedclothes.
“Go away,” she moaned when Betty offered the toast. “Stuff your toast.”
“She’s ill,” Betty reported back to Shirley. “And I went to all that trouble with the toast.”
A Gentleman Caller
Niven strolled along the Embankment. It was the kind of balmy Sunday afternoon in spring which demanded that a man leave his car behind and walk with his dog.
In Niven, the rest of the family sensed backbone. It was strangely attractive to them, perhaps because of the novelty. Cokers had no backbone, only strength of will. Was “backbone” another word for courage? During the war, Niven had run under heavy machine-gun fire to rescue a wounded man and had then run back to his trench with the man slung over his shoulders. And then he did the same thing again, though he was wounded himself by then, but he did it because they were boys, barely out of childhood, even though one was his commanding officer, and he didn’t think they deserved to have their lives ended by the insanely stupid bastards in government who thought war was necessary and good. And furthermore he had said all of that to the lieutenant colonel who was trying to pin a medal on his chest, and thus found himself on a charge of insubordination. Perhaps that was foolishness, not courage.
And was it from foolishness or from courage that on this fine afternoon he was walking across town, thinking about a woman and wondering if it was better all round—for her and for him—if he never saw her again, unaware that even at this moment she was sharing a pot of tea with his mother in the dusty Sabbath stillness of the Crystal Cup?